ANTWERP
The economic and social development, accompanying the political
transformation which we have just witnessed, was entirely dominated by
the amazing prosperity of the city of Antwerp. The latter became,
during the first part of the sixteenth century, the first market and
the first banking centre in the world. For trade, limited during the
two former centuries to Europe, now extended to the New World, and the
Atlantic route hereafter played a more and more important part. The
same causes which brought about the decadence of Venice were the direct
causes of the growth of Antwerp. It is true that Bruges occupied a
similar position on the map, and from being a purely European market
might have become a world-metropolis. We have seen that the silting up
of the Zwyn did not account alone for the rapid decadence of the
Flemish city, and that the conservatism of the Guilds and Corporations,
their attachment to their old privileges and their disregard of modern
tendencies, were the main reasons of its downfall. In 1513, Damme and
Sluis were partly in ruins, and in the middle of the century, whole
quarters of Bruges were emptied of their inhabitants, while over seven
thousand destitute depended on charity. Unhampered by mediaeval
traditions and enjoying the advantages of a deeper and more accessible
harbour, Antwerp was bound to secure the heritage of its former rival
and to add to it the prosperity derived from the opening of new markets
and the rapid widening of the circle of trade activity during the
Renaissance.
As opposed to Bruges, Antwerp characterizes modern capitalist
tendencies resting on the freedom of trade and on individual
initiative. The advantages enjoyed by foreigners in the new metropolis
drew gradually towards it the powerful companies of Spanish, English
and German merchants, whose presence was so essential in a market where
most of the imported goods were re-exported to distant countries. The
Florentine Guicciardini, who resided in the Low Countries from 1542 to
1589, describes Antwerp as "an excellent and famous city," where
30,000,000 florins' worth of merchandise arrives every year, and in
whose Exchange transactions of 40,000,000 ducats take place. Out of its
100,000 inhabitants, 10,000 to 15,000 were foreigners. There were
13,500 "beautiful, agreeable and spacious" houses, and the rents varied
from 200 to 500 ecus yearly. The inhabitants "are well and gaily
clothed; their houses are well kept, well ordered and furnished with
all sorts of household objects. The air of the country is thick and
damp, but it is healthy and encourages the appetite and the fecundity
of the people." He insists, in his description, on the abundant life
led by the rich bourgeois of the great city.
The decadence of the cloth industry, caused by the development of
English weaving, did not greatly affect the prosperity of Antwerp,
since it benefited from the import of English cloth, which arrived at
its docks in a rough state and was dyed and prepared by local artisans.
Besides, urban industry in Flanders and Brabant had to a great extent
been replaced by rural industry. Employers found in the country
districts the cheap labour that was needed, owing to foreign
competition, and, for a hundred workers who lost their employment in
the towns, thousands of weavers were only too ready to work up the raw
material provided for them by the merchants. The linen industry, which
more and more took the lead, recruited its labour in the same way, not
only in Flanders but also in Brabant, Holland and Hainault. The flax of
the country provided excellent raw material, notably in the region of
the Lys, whose water was specially suitable for retting. In 1530,
England bought from Flanders 100,000 marks' worth of linen in the
course of the year. It was soon found necessary to import flax from
Russia.
[_INDUSTRIAL PROSPERITY_]
The development of tapestry contributed also to fill up the gap caused
by the decadence of clothmaking. From Arras, where it had flourished
since the eleventh century, it extended, in the fifteenth century, to
the regions of Alost, Oudenarde, Enghien, Tournai and Brussels, and, in
the sixteenth, to those of Binche, Ath, Lille, Louvain and Ghent. The
Low Countries were especially suited to this branch of industry, owing
to the perfection of dyeing methods and to the great number of painters
and draughtsmen able to provide the workers with beautiful designs.
Here, again, most of the artisans were villagers, in spite of the
resistance of the old corporations. Around Oudenarde, in 1539, about
fourteen thousand men, women and children were engaged in this work.
Even the region of the Meuse was affected. It possessed mineral
resources besides great hydraulic power in its rapid streams. At the
beginning of the reign of Charles V, a great number of forges and blast
furnaces heated with wood were installed in Namurois. According to
Guicciardini "there was a constant hammering, forging, smelting and
tempering in so many furnaces, among so many flames, sparks and so much
smoke, that it seemed as if one were in the glowing forges of Vulcan."
Such a description must not be taken too literally, and the beginnings
of the metal industry in the Southern provinces were very modest
indeed, compared with present conditions. But, even then, a sharp
distinction was drawn between the employers, usually some rich
bourgeois of the town, who had the means to set up these embryo
factories, and the rural population employed to work them. While these
new conditions were developing, the corporations of Dinant, which had
for a long time monopolized the copper industry, were fast
disappearing, partly owing to the difficulty of obtaining the raw
material from the mines of Moresnet, but chiefly owing to the
protectionist spirit of the Guilds, which would not adapt themselves to
modern needs. At the same period, the coal industry was growing in
importance in the Liege district, the use of coal being extended from
domestic consumption to the metal industry. By the end of the sixteenth
century, all the superficial seams which could be worked by means of
inclined planes were practically exhausted, and it was found necessary
to resort to blasting and to sink pits, in order to reach the lower
strata. The bourgeois of Liege furnished the necessary funds for this
innovation, which they were the first in Europe to undertake, so that
the new industry soon acquired the same capitalistic character which we
have noticed in the metal industry, tapestry and textiles.
[_RURAL CONDITIONS_]
Though the condition of the peasantry was very prosperous and
agricultural methods had improved, the increase of large properties,
due to the investment in land of the money acquired by trade and
industry, favoured the development of a large class of agricultural
labourers, whose situation contrasted unfavourably with that of the
large tenant and the smaller farmer.
In every branch of economic activity, modern methods rapidly supplanted
mediaeval conditions. From the general point of view of the country's
prosperity, the change was beneficial and the princes showed wisdom in
supporting it. A return to the narrow regulations and guild monopolies
of the fourteenth century would have proved as fatal, in the fifteenth,
as a return to the feudal system in the thirteenth. The princes
supported the rich merchants and employers in the Renaissance, as they
supported the Communes in the twelfth century. The corporation system,
which had proved a boon at that time, had become an obstacle to free
activity and initiative and had therefore to be sacrificed. But, at the
same time, the formation of a large class of unorganized rural workers,
who had no means of defending themselves against the ruthless
exploitation of their employers, was bound to prove a cause of social
unrest. It was among these uneducated masses that the Anabaptists
recruited most of their followers, and the industrial population around
Hondschoote and Armentieres provided the first bands of iconoclasts
whose excesses contributed so much to confuse the issue of the
revolution against Spain. Modern monarchy, which had upheld the new
order of things, became the scapegoat of the discontented, and the
suffering and exasperated people were no longer able to distinguish
between the evil brought about by unrestrained capitalism and the good
resulting from the organization of a strongly centralized State.
* * * * *
[_HUMANISM_]
Antwerp was not only the centre of economic activity for the Low
Countries, it became, as early as 1518, the cradle of Lutheranism. It
is needless to recall here how the doctrines of Martin Luther, born in
the German Empire, had gradually spread through Northern Europe, and
how his criticism of the morals of the clergy had originated a
criticism of the dogmas of the Roman Catholic religion. Hitherto
similar movements, such as those started in the Low Countries by Gerard
de Brogne and the Beggards during the Middle Ages, and, during the last
century, by Gerard de Groote, the founder of the Brothers of the Common
Life, had confined themselves to fighting the excesses of the Church,
remaining throughout orthodox, as far as the dogmas were concerned. Now
the principle of free individualism was transplanted from the economic
to the religious domain, and capitalistic initiative and freedom of
trade found corresponding expression in free interpretation of the
Bible. The movement had been prepared and, to a certain extent,
favoured by the educative action of the Brothers of the Common Life,
who, though remaining strictly faithful to the Church, had nevertheless
substituted, in their schools, lay for clerical teaching. It is
interesting to remark that both Humanism, as represented by its
greatest master, Erasmus, and the art of printing, represented by
Thierry Maertens and Jean Veldener, who were its originators at Alost
and Louvain, were closely connected with the educational movement
promoted by the Brothers. Erasmus had first studied at Deventer. The
extraordinary success of his _Adagia_, published in 1500, and of his
early works, influenced by Thomas More (with whom he had been brought
into contact during his stay in England as a protege of Lord Mountjoy),
seems certainly strange in view of the unbending attitude taken by
Charles V towards Lutheranism. But Humanism had become the fashion in
high aristocratic and ecclesiastical circles, and neither the young
emperor nor his gouvernante, Mary of Hungary, disguised their interest
in the movement. It is true that Erasmus endeavoured to reconcile
Christian dogmas with the new philosophy inspired by the Classics, but
his attacks against asceticism, the celibacy of the priests and the
superstition and ignorance of the monks would certainly not have been
tolerated if they had influenced social life at large. The situation,
at the beginning of the fifteenth century, among intellectuals and
aristocrats was very much the same as that which prevailed at the
courts of France, Prussia and Russia at the end of the eighteenth
century. Princes and nobles extended to Voltaire similar favours, and
for the same reasons. As long as their situation in the State was not
threatened, they encouraged doctrines and intellectual pursuits which,
besides providing them with fresh interests and distractions, justified
to a certain extent the laxity of their morals. But, whatever their
personal convictions might have been, their attitude had to change
entirely as soon as the doctrine was adopted by the common people and
when the privileges of Church and State, so closely bound together,
began to be questioned by the masses. That Charles V's policy was not
prompted only by his affection for the Church is shown by the fact
that, a few years before, he had subjected the pope's Bull to his
"placet," taken measures to restrict mortmain (which exempted Church
property from taxation), and had obtained the right to designate
bishops.
[_ANABAPTISTS_]
It must be acknowledged that, as the new doctrines spread from the
aristocracy to the people, they assumed a more extreme character. The
first step in this direction was taken by Lutheranism, whose attacks
against dogmas were far more precise and categoric than those of the
Humanists. In the Low Countries, however, Lutheranism, at the beginning
of the sixteenth century, was still tolerant. It mainly affected a few
nobles and a number of rich bourgeois. Church and State, according to
them, were separate entities, and one could remain perfectly loyal to
the prince while denying the authority of the pope. They professed, in
other words, the principle of liberty of conscience, and, while
preserving the right to separate themselves from the dominant Church,
they did not make any attempt to enforce their theories on any
unwilling converts. The first "placard" issued against them by the
emperor was extremely severe in terms, since it condemned all heretics
to death, but was very lightly applied. The men were to perish by the
sword, the women to be buried alive and recanters to be burnt. But the
Belgian bishops were unwilling to denounce the Lutherans and to deliver
them to the secular arm. Influenced by his Spanish advisers, some of
whom had initiated the Spanish Inquisition, Charles, in 1523,
transferred the right of prosecution from the bishops to three special
inquisitors enjoying full powers. The first executions were too rare to
impress the public mind in an age when such spectacles were so frequent
for other reasons, and the "placards," which had received the sanction
of the States General, did not provoke much opposition. A new stage was
reached in 1530 by the appearance of Anabaptism, which had spread from
Muenster into Holland and Gelder. Melchior Hoffmann, the leader of this
movement, claimed to found the kingdom of heaven by the sword. He
incensed the poor people by inflammatory speeches in which he invited
them to install the new regime of brotherhood on the ruins of the old
world. Their triumph would be the "day of vengeance." His success among
the sailors and the agricultural labourers of the North, who endured
great sufferings under the new economic conditions and owing to the war
with Denmark, was very rapid, and ought to have been a warning to the
governing classes. The Anabaptists did not make any distinction
between Church and State, like the Lutherans, neither did they
entertain the idea of freedom of conscience. They were as extremist in
their views as the Spanish inquisitors. They intended to enforce their
social and mystic doctrines on a reluctant population and appealed to
open revolution. In fighting them, the Government was backed by the
immense majority of the population, and, after the fall of Muenster,
this danger was for the time averted.
[_CALVINISTS_]
A few years later, however, Calvinism, spread by Swiss and French
disguised predicants, began to make considerable progress among the
rural population of the Western and Northern provinces. The Calvinists,
like the Anabaptists, did not believe in freedom of conscience. They
opposed the fanaticism of the Spanish inquisition with the fanaticism
of the Reformers and opened the fight without any idea of conciliation.
They distributed satiric pamphlets, secretly printed, in which the
Church and the court were grossly caricatured, and their loathing for
the worship of the Virgin and the Saints degenerated into blasphemy and
sacrilege. They found very little favour among the educated classes,
but made a number of converts among the discontented proletarians, who
led a very miserable life in the neighbourhood of the most important
industrial centres. To counteract this propaganda, Charles issued a new
"placard," in 1550, which forbade the printing, selling or buying of
reformist pamphlets, together with any public or private discussion on
religious matters. Even to ask forgiveness for a heretic or to abstain
from denouncing him was considered as a crime punishable by death and
confiscation of property. Half of the fortune of the condemned went to
the denunciator, the other half to the State. Only in one quarter, in
the nominally independent bishopric of Liege, where Erard de la Marck
issued similar decrees, was the repression successful. Everywhere else,
the number of new proselytes increased with that of the executions, and
when the emperor abdicated, it seemed evident that a war of religion
could not be averted. This war was destined to break up Belgian unity,
which had only just been entirely achieved. This might have been
averted if Belgium had been allowed to cope with the Reformation crisis
in all independence, according to the social conditions of the time,
like other European States. A truly national prince and Government
would, no doubt, have succeeded in keeping the country together, but
Belgium no longer enjoyed the advantage of being ruled by national
princes. Hapsburgian dynastic principles had conquered Burgundian
traditions. Orders no longer emanated from Brussels but from Madrid, so
that to the obstacles created by religious differences and class hatred
was added the bitter conflict between patriots and foreign rulers.